American Tropical

, . . . . . Los Angeles, 1932, in the headlines, the baby son of Charles Lindbergh is kidnapped. Al Capone enters a plant of prison.

A man invades China. Albert Einstein visits Caltech. Other news does not make the headlines. The series of agricultural labor strikes sweeps California. The Confederation de Uniones de Redas begins the strikes. Later it will be strikes by the Trade Union Unity League, and later still by the Canary and Agricultural Workers Union. The growers band together with law enforcement agencies to put down these subversive strikes. Finally the strikes are broken with tear gas, mass arrests, and vigilante committees. It is the beginning. In Ardmore, Oklahoma, a cousin of Mexico's president, or he Ruby, the companion, are shot

and killed by a deputy sheriff. The governor of Oklahoma offers a scholarship to honor the slain Mexicans. It is rejected by the Mexican government. The deputy sheriff is not held. The deaths are considered a tragic mistake. In 1932, East Los Angeles celebrates that yes, he says this of Diembe with a parade. But the parade this year will be smaller. Already thousands of Mexicans and American citizens of Mexican descent have been deported on trains chartered by a Los Angeles County welfare organization. In 1930 and 1940, over 200,000 Mexicans and American citizens will be repatriated. For the Colombian people whoير people who divorced, now put on this poll.

1932 also seized the arrival in Los Angeles of Mexican muralist David Alfaro Cicados. Born in 1896, Cicados received his first artistic training at the Academy of San Carlos in 1911. As a leader in the student strikes, he begins his career as a political activist and artist. The Mexican Revolution.

Cicados rises to the rank of Capitan Segundo as a Carrancista. After the Revolution, Cicados is sent to Europe as a military attaché. He studies art instead. Returning home in 1922, Cicados embarks on his first series of murals at the Preparatoria unless you're not the angel. Barrio of a worker.

In 1927, Cicados leads a delegation of Mexican minors to an international congress in Moscow. In 1929, he paints the proletariat mother. In 1932, Cicados is invited to Los Angeles to paint a mural at the Shenard School of Art. Working with a group of sovereign artists, the Fresco blockpaders, Cicados undertakes a 25-foot fresco which he calls street meeting. My name is Miller Cheats, and I had the pleasure of meeting David Alfredo Cicados in the early summer of 1932.

I met him at a series of parties and being a young artist wanting to know more about new techniques, I persuaded him to teach some eight of his fresco painting. I was teaching at Shenard at the time, and Mrs. Shenard graciously gave us the building in which to conduct the class, and we had a very exciting experimental period of a couple of weeks where he showed us many different techniques. I was doing this period that he conceived of the idea of doing the mural at Shenard on one of the walls in the main court. In his own words, the owner of the art school, Mrs. Shenard, wanted me to paint just anything. Anything simple. He had heard rumors that our Mexican painting was a purely nationalistic style of painting, possibly a folk art and nothing more. But it occurred to me to paint on that outdoor mural, a work entitled Street Meeting, and it occurred to me to paint in that meeting blacks and whites together, and blacks and

whites together no less than in Los Angeles, California. The result was that all the racist Americans were tremendously upset by the mural. What right does this pernicious foreigner have coming to our land, and provoking a racial problem that's bad enough as it is? The newspapers were relentless in their attack until they forced the poor lady to build a wall tall enough to block the view of my work from the outside. Later, they were able to destroy the mural completely. Step K. Forens, the director of the Plaza Arts Center in Olveta Street, commissioned cicados to paint another mural. This one is to be painted by a group of 20 students under the direction of cicados. Cicados said, the owner of a gallery, the Plaza Arts Center, wanted to have the same kind of publicity.

A typical bourgeois Yankee, he called me aside and said, I want you to paint me an outdoor mural 30 meters long and 12 meters high. As you know, he went on, my gallery is in the Mexican section of Los Angeles, a city of more than 500,000 Mexicans. The opportunity was magnificent. The owner went on. The work may begin when and if you accept the theme that I give you. And that is the theme of Tropical Emerald, without any hesitation I asked for the wording of the contract in sign. He used a shirt up around 9 o'clock in the morning and then we painted till about 10, 12, I mean till noon and then you have to know and all together it was still going at first.

The first half of it we painted on perhaps a week and then Mr. Cicados dug in and really made the other half much faster than the first half. The owner like a good Yankee capitalist has spent the whole night thinking up the theme. As one might imagine for him Tropical America meant a continent of happy men surrounded by palm trees and squawking parrots where fruits fell voluntarily from trees to the mouths of the happy mortals. But instead I painted a man crucified, a man crucified on a double cross and poised proudly over it was the eagle of the United States currency. My mural was the mural of a Mexican painter who had fought in the revolution.

Who knew that his first duty before aesthetic concerns was to fulfill the expression of his ideology. Now it's true that Mr. Ference thought that America Tropical was a part of the world inhabited by happy men and that they passed the time rocking in their hammocks. But for me America Tropical was a land of natives, of Indians, of creoles, negros, of black men, of the following centuries and centuries and centuries and centuries and centuries.

And in all of these countries they were struggling for the same cause. There was great controversy, some people really liked it thoroughly and every possible way others were very much against it being it had something to do with political controversy or propaganda and I think in most instances in powerful art you find this to be true. I think that very often some of the most potent things that have been done in the history of art over a period of time or all time has produced controversy. I'm sure that Mr. Caeros had a very clear picture of what he had in mind when he painted the mural and I think he expressed it very well I don't think he fumbled the ball I think he knew exactly what he was doing.

Shortly after the completion of America Tropical the United States government refuses to renew Cicado 6 month visa. In November of 1932 Cicado sleeves for Arhentima. In the wake of his departure public pressure demands that the controversial mural be destroyed. F.K. Ference the director of the Plaza Arts Center orders that all portions of the mural visible from the street be whitewashed. Two years later the entire mural is covered. Without a doubt my work was destroyed because of its theme, because of the content that I had put into it and doubtedly there was no other reason.

As I have seen newspaper clippings from Los Angeles and other parts of the United States that show the violent campaign against the theme and this starting with Mr. Ference himself. As I said before he considered himself betrayed by the theme I had undertaken. And that is why the mural was attacked. In the wake of his departure public pressure demands that all portions of the mural be destroyed.

F.K. Ference the director of the Plaza Arts Center orders that all portions of the mural the whitewashing of the murals clear evidence of the inability for the racist institutions to allow us to express our experience as we see it, allowing our criteria to be used instead of the stereotype kind of criteria that we have had to deal with all these years

that have created so many of our problems. Chicago art can only be understood in relation to the people whose experience is reflecting. My interest in Mexican painting dates back a good many years but specifically the interest in the Cicados mural came when I visited Mexico City in 1965 and interviewed Cicados. I also purchased a new biography that had been issued about his life which showed pictures of the various murals he had painted in Los Angeles. So upon my return I went to see the murals to see if I could photograph it and the idea of course came up at that time that there was a possibility of restoration. How does Cicados in South feel about having murals destroyed? Well of course when the time came of getting his permission for a restoration which would have been necessary or at least to get his opinion on the idea of a restoration, I wrote

to him and his letter indicated a great deal of enthusiasm for a mural that had been covered for so long, the possibility of having his only major public mural in the United States restored. If I were the Los Angeles Commission which as you know would have the final say in any reconstruction of not only of this Billy but any other Billy has shown considerable interest in the preservation of this mural, they wanted to preserve and of course there are certain things that we have to be worked out with them last to for instance, how to get people out there so they could view this painting and so forth and the main concern as use is what to do right now to preserve it so that the weather or the elements won't amateur anymore. We have you know talked to quite a few people and there are different opinions and I think which you'll get someone from Mexico possibly that has done this kind of work before I understand the problems involved and especially taking to consideration the fact that still

outside on the has to be preserved from the elements of for future years. For two years, almost two years I had tried to get some kind of financing for their trip here, they were willing to come, the two restores were willing to come without any kind of pay or remuneration for their expenses and for claim fair. And finally to make this documentary I was able to have Jaime Mejia and Josefina Casada come to Los Angeles and they have now informed us that the mural is restorable. The mural rather than being restored can be preserved.

The reason for this is that if we restore the mural we would have to practically reconstruct the entire work of the artist and this is not what it is about reconstructing the work of the artist. Our intention is to preserve what has already been done by the artist. We have encountered the following problems in this mural firstly the mural has suffered a mixture of colors between the white wash and the colors put on by the artist that is the original colors of the mural. Another difficulty we have found is that the characteristics of the mural are not the characteristics of the traditional mural painting.

The traditional fresco form is as follows. We first have the wall of the mural. Over this wall are put two coats of surfaces and over these two coats of surfacing is applied a third coat which is the one that will support the colors. In this case however Maestro Siqueiros did not do this since he was experimenting with a new technique. His new technique was his father. He would put on the wall of the mural just one coat of surfacing over a black cement base. On this coat of cement he would paint directly so that the colors fixed immediately on the surface. This caused the mural over the passage of time to develop cracks which we can see here

in circular form. These cracks have been caused by the separation of the mural surface from the wall after being constantly soaked by the rain and then drying rapidly under the sun. In this case we can see the separation because if we knock on the wall we can hear the hollow sound of the separation of the mural from the wall. Another problem with the mural is the color. The color has been almost completely lost. We can see very clearly how the color has been washed by the rains. Now we would have no other way of restoring the color without using what is there as a guy.

Because of this we could not lift off the mural surface because we would then not have a coat of color to serve as a guide for restoration. Now in an extreme case where the mural might have to be removed or if there were people interested in taking the mural from here and placing it in a museum or some place where it might be better preserved we would have to remove the entire wall from the building. Then place a new wall in its place and then remove the mural from the back side of the wall and not to side with the painting. I suggest that if there is no extreme urgency in removing the mural that it would be preserved in the following way.

First we would clean off all the white wash from the mural. It is left to the white wash with which it was covered. Next we would clean off the tar that is covering the lower portion. We would then restore color to the blank areas to match those areas that do have color. We would then cover the mural with a plastic coating, transparent, as transparent as possible that the original work of cicados may be seen. Lastly we would cover the top portion with a kind of roofing with an awning so that the rain will not hit the mural directly so the mural can be protected at the top. Of course the biggest thing that we will have to be done is the question of raising funds.

We will certainly need the efforts of the community of Los Angeles, both the Chicano community, the Art Conscious community, all people who feel this is an important and major work of art that should and must be saved in any way possible. I of course would direct all of my efforts toward that end. I think it is very important that the mural be preserved for two basic reasons. The first is that this mural is a very fine mural of cicadas' early period. So for aesthetic reasons it would be very important to save it as well as historical reasons. The second reason is the implications that this has for the Chicano community. It establishes a link between the community in Los Angeles and that of Mexico in the work of this one great Mexican muralist. Naturally I support the struggle of the Mexicans, of the Latin Americans in the United States.

Since it is a major importance to our own struggle, I believe that since that time when the Mexican first began to struggle in a positive manner, the repressions against the activities of Mexicans and Latin Americans had already begun. It is important to remember this fact. I believe that we, the Mexicans of this side of the border, have an obligation to lend our most complete, our fullest support as much as we can to our compañeros who are struggling in the United States. I have always done this and I will continue to do it. And I think that there is no Mexican intellectual who would not be ready to lend his most complete

and fullest help in the struggle. Thank you very much.